


What (Else) Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?

by charlottechill



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aging, Cancer, Canon Character of Color, Canon Queer Character of Color, Discussion of Assisted Suicide, Future Character Death, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Mortality, Post-Canon, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:06:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: Once, Joe had taken his hand after watching the cut on his finger close up and said carefully, "I think we need to talk about what happens if I die before you."Joe grows old. Nicky...doesn’t.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 22
Kudos: 113





	1. (the remix of the original)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398537) by [AnnabelleVeal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnabelleVeal/pseuds/AnnabelleVeal). 



> AnnabelleVeal is really the *only* creator of this story. I just filed off a trigger and filled in a different trigger so my friend could love it too, and AnnabelleVeal was generous enough to welcome it. 
> 
> Please heed the tags and check the end notes if you want more specific content warnings. I replicated the author's warnings as much as possible/appropriate.
> 
> If you choose to read Chapter 2, *definitely* check the end notes if you have any trigger concerns. Tags don't cover the added bits.

Nicky had always believed that he and Joe would lose their immortality at the same time. They had been reborn together and they would die their final deaths together—it was destiny.

So when Joe took a wrong step off the curb and stared in confusion as his rolled ankle continued to throb minutes later, Nicky turned and punched the brick facade of the building beside them, just so he could see the unhealing scrapes on his own knuckles.

He punched the wall over and over and over again, watching in horror as his fingers snapped and reformed.

He kept beating against the bricks, waiting desperately for the mangled skin and bones to stop knitting back together, until Joe came up behind him and wrapped him in his arms, cradling him as he sank to the pavement and wept.

\---

In time they adjusted to the new state of things. Joe joined Andy and Copley in running logistics on jobs, while Nicky, Nile, and Quynh learned how to fill in the gaps. Joe grumbled at the nuisances of having a normal body again, learning about sore muscles and seasonal allergies and a hundred other things he had forgotten from his life before. 

It was not entirely without its perks, Nicky discovered, as he sucked hard at Joe’s collarbone and was rewarded by a delightful red bruise blooming below the skin. 

And besides, Nicky reasoned, Joe had been three years older than him when he died the first time, so of course it might take Nicky a little longer to catch up. His time would come and they would still grow old together, just like it was supposed to be.

\---

Three years became five years became ten, and still Nicky’s immortality stuck to him like his shadow (or like shit to a shovel, he thought, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Booker’s). He tried not to lose faith. Joe's body was still that of a relatively young man, and as long as Nicky was mortal by the time Joe reached old age, it would be alright. He would still be able to follow him. Joe hesitated when Nicky told him this, eyes sad, like maybe he was about to object, so Nicky kissed him, hard, and swallowed any possible protest. 

Every few months, Nicky would check to see if maybe he had finally stopped healing, and every time there was no change. But it was alright, he was a patient man. 

Once, Joe had taken his hand after watching the cut on his finger close up and said carefully, "I think we need to talk about what happens if I die before you."

"No,” Nicky said, shaking his head. “No, I refuse to consider that as a possibility. I cannot accept that we would be brought into this life to find each other, only to have you ripped away from me. The universe would not be so cruel."

“Believe me, I hope more than anything that you’re right, but just in case, I need to know that when the time comes, you'll be able to let me go. To move on—"

Nicky started to interrupt, but Joe held his hand up to stop him

“—not right away, of course. I expect at least two years of full mourning dress,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly. “But Nicolò, I'm serious. I need to know that you'll be okay.”

Nicky wanted to say that of course he wouldn't be okay, that living without Joe would be like living with half his limbs removed, or his heart outside his body. That he would rather spend the next thousand years at the bottom of the ocean like Quynh than spend them here without Joe by his side.

But Joe was staring at him plaintively, eyes so full of love and worry, that Nicky just stayed silent as he continued, "Please, when it's my time, I want to go out like my first death—swift and easy."

_And by my hand?_ Nicky thought to himself, panic and bile rising in his throat. "I wish you wouldn't ask this of me."

“I know,” Joe said, “It’s not fair, none of it is.”

Nicky sighed. “I will do my best.”

Joe smiled at him sadly. “You always do.”

\---

Andy died, and the world shifted on its axis.

\---

Quynh called from a burner phone. She and Andy had been traveling for the past eight months: part greatest hits reunion tour, part bucket list trip. They’d been side-swiped by a truck while on a motorbike, she told them. A hit-and-run. When she revived, she’d found Andy lying mangled and unconscious by the side of the road, spine broken and skull fractured, no hope of a meaningful recovery. She'd given her a final kiss and shot her straight through the heart. 

"I need some time. I'll see you in a few years, give or take a century," she had said, hanging up the phone. Joe immediately tried to call her back, but the line was already dead.

\---

Things fell apart for a while. The three of them floundered, not sure how to navigate the gaping, empty spaces around them. Sometimes they lashed out, finding endless ways to be awful to each other in their grief. Nile took off at one point (probably to see Booker, but Nicky didn't ask), and he and Joe spiraled into their worst fight in decades, the kind that simmered and flared over the better part of a week. 

They were talking (shouting) it through again, going around in circles, when Nicky said for the third time, "I just don't understand how she could _do_ that," and he caught something in Joe's face shift. It was a slight twitch of his lip, or maybe a furrow between the eyes, but it stopped him in his tracks.

"What is it? Are you going to defend her again for murdering the woman she loved without even attempting to save her?"

Joe rose from where he was sitting. He crossed to Nicky and placed his hands on his shoulders to stop his pacing and caught his eye. "Do you really believe Quynh would have shot her if she thought there was any chance she would recover? It was what Andy would have wanted. It's what _I_ would want."

"But, to not even _try._ I don't understand it—if there was even a sliver of hope that they could get more time together. I just…" he trailed off.

"My love, we have all of us had so very much time already."

"It will _never_ be enough," Nicky said, tears in his eyes, both of them knowing they weren't talking about Quynh anymore.

\---

The thing is, it’s not like Nicky had never considered it; 900-and-some-odd years together meant of course he had thought about losing Joe. 

One time on a battlefield, Joe threw himself on a grenade and Nicky had watched in horror as the blast blew apart his body. During the endless pause as he waited to see if Joe would wake up, Nicky had expected to feel some sort of clarity—maybe even acceptance. But all he had felt was a yawning terror at the realization of how long eternity could be.

\---

Nicky was sitting on the bed behind Joe, watching him in the mirror as he combed his beard. He kept it a little shorter these days, and both it and his hair were streaked heavily with silver. He watched Joe's fingers stroke over a few wiry gray chest hairs. “When did I become so old?” he mused out loud, the corners of his mouth tugging downward with a hint of unhappiness. 

Nicky slipped off the bed and came to stand behind him, wrapping his arms around Joe's waist and hooking his chin over his shoulder. "The better question, I believe," he said, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of Joe’s pants for a moment before trailing upwards again, "is how is it that you become even more handsome every day?"

In the mirror, Nicky saw Joe roll his eyes, but he brought his hands down to rest on Nicky's arms and leaned his weight back. "You flatter me too much."

"It's not flattery, it's true. You are, as the kids say, a total daddy."

Joe snorted. "No kid has said that for at least twenty years." He turned around and buried his face in Nicky's neck before mouthing along the tendon and up towards his jaw.

Nicky slid his hands into Joe's back pockets and tugged his hips forward. "Okay, _daddy_ ," he said, and Joe huffed out a laugh and leaned in to kiss him.

Later, when they were lying side by side, sated and content, Joe rolled towards him and said, "I won't mind, you know. If you need to find other people to be with."

Nicky turned his head. "Right now? I don't think I could come again so soon." He grinned as Joe swatted at his thigh.

"You know what I mean—when I'm old and frail and my dick doesn't work—”

“—we will get you some Viagra and a nice wedge pillow."

" _Nicky."_

Nicky turned all the way over to face him. "Please," he said, taking hold of Joe's hands, "do not insult my love for you by believing that there will ever come a time when I would not want you. I will take you however I can have you, for as long as I can have you.”

"Now who is the romantic," Joe grumbled, but his eyes were shining.

Nicky was sure there had been tens of thousands of moments like these in their long lifetime, and he had loved every one of them. But he had not treasured them—not really, not the way that he did now—until faced with the reality that they would end.

\---

The years passed. They had a good life and did good work. It was harder with just the three of them, but they watched the world change around them and tried to change with it. They lost Copley suddenly to a stroke, and as Joe grew noticeably older and slower, Nicky and Nile reached an unspoken agreement that they would take some time off. 

There was a house just outside of Ostia—close enough to smell the sea, but with enough land to avoid prying eyes and nosy neighbors—that Joe had bought and renovated around the turn of the last century. Nicky and Joe settled there, furnishing a spare room for Nile for whenever she wanted to visit. She was finishing a master’s degree in Florence, something about archival studies and decolonization, but on long weekends she would drive down and they cooked elaborate dinners and ate late in the evening out in the yard under the stars. There was a peace and stillness to their lives now that Nicky hadn’t felt in years.

\---

It started out so small—Joe misplacing the glasses he now had to wear for reading, and getting headaches when he tried to sketch. One night, Nicky found him sitting on the couch, an old sketchbook open on his lap and Joe staring down at it with a perplexed look on his face.

"Joe?" Nicky said, as he sat beside him.

“I need my eyes checked. I can feel the lead better than I can see it.” Joe traced his finger along the pencil lines.

Nicky swallowed around the lump in his throat. “It's late, come to bed. Sleep will help,” he said, and Joe obliged, following Nicky back to their room.

The next day he took Joe to the doctor.

After all the poking and prodding and scans and tests, they had an answer: cancer. Cancer? Cancer would take Yusuf Al Kaysani when whole civilizations risen and fallen had not?

The train ride passed in silence. "I'm going to lie down," Joe said, as soon as they got inside, and he retreated to the bedroom.

Nicky called Nile.

She had been staying at her apartment in Rome, and within an hour she was sitting at the kitchen table with him. 

“How bad is it?” 

“He has a brain tumor,” Nicky said. He knew his voice wasn’t steady. Stage II they hope, but they have taken blood and scans that they will not confirm anything until the radiologist and the attending physician have examined them all.”

“So we wait.”

“Yes,” Nicky said, and watched a tear splatter on the back of his hand. “If it’s not treatable, they said it could take anywhere from--” he stopped himself, not able to say it. 

“Did they tell you much about what we’re supposed to expect?” she asked, her gaze piercing.

Nicky shook his head. “Some, I think, but I couldn’t really hear it. Everything was a blur.”

Nile chewed her lip. “We’ve got some cancer in my family. No brain cancer. I’ll read up. And Nicky, things keep changing. Maybe they can operate, maybe there’s some targeted therapies. You don’t stop hoping yet.”

Nicky folded his arms on the table and laid his head down on them. “What if this is some sort of punishment for all of my past sins—having to lose him not just to death, but to suffering?”

"Do you really believe you're so special that God would give Joe cancer just to punish you?" Nile asked, skeptical.

Nicky let out a long sigh. “I’m not sure what I believe.”

Nile placed her hand on the back of his head, fingers carding gently through the short hairs at the nape of his neck, and it felt like some kind of benediction.

\---

Something jolted Nicky awake and he shot upright on the couch, looking over to where Joe had dozed off beside him and finding the space empty. The clock on the wall read 2:30. A sharp bang came from the hallway—the front door was open and swinging in the wind. _Shit_. Nicky grabbed his shoes and a coat and took off running down the street, skidding on the rain-slicked pavement.

A few blocks away, he finally spotted him—huddled under a bus shelter, arms wrapped tightly around his bare chest, shivering hard. 

“Joe? Yusuf?” Nicky called out, and Joe looked up and stumbled over towards him. Nicky met him halfway, immediately shrugging out of the coat and draping it around Joe’s shaking shoulders. 

“Nicolò,” Joe said, and this close Nicky could tell that he had been crying. “I needed out for a minute, Nicky. My skull is pounding like something wants out of it.”

Nicky laughed, tears in his eyes, and hung on tightly. “I may have purchased some wonderful opiods for you and stashed them, after I read a little about this thing in your head. Want to get high?”

“I’m scared,” Joe said, the admission coming out barely more than a whisper. “I'm not ready to leave you."

Nicky choked back tears. "Well good, because I'm not ready for you to leave," he replied stubbornly.

Together, hair soaked with the rain, they walked each other back to the house.

\---

The next doctor’s appointment was a mixed bag of news. The primary tumor was operable, but high risk. The cancer had spread, which meant toxic chemicals and radiation, an eight-week course of the first and five rounds of the latter, then asses Joe’s condition.

“We’ll discuss it, Doctor.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Joe said. “Cut the damned thing out before I take a kitchen knife and go after it myself.”

Nicky hadn’t known the pain was that bad, but the risk—of losing some part of what made him _Joe_ , of dying on the operating table—

Joe smiled. “It’s not like they can—his eyes widened, no doubt at the horror Nicky could feel freezing his own face. “Bad time for dark humor, love?”

“Yes. Very bad time.”

Joe took his hand and squeezed hard enough that Nicky’s knuckles scraped together. “The pain’s bad, Nicky. It’s bad and it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t fade. Nothing helps much. I do not want to—”

“When can we schedule?” Nicky asked. He did not want to hear whatever Joe might say next.

Nile started spending more and more time with them, eventually subletting her apartment and moving in entirely. They took turns driving Joe into the city for his various appointments. Nile usually posed as a home health aide, but Nicky had never lied about his love for Joe and he refused to start now, so he always said that he was his husband. He listened to the nurses gossiping about it today—saying that Joe must be rich, that Nicky was a gold digger, or maybe it was some kind of immigration scheme. Nicky ignored them.

They were quiet on the drive home. Joe was staring out the window like he was watching the scenery, but his eyes were unfocused. Nicky reached over to turn on the radio and Joe stopped him and took his hand.

“I feel like I should apologize,” he said.

Baffled, Nicky asked, “What on earth do you think you have to apologize for?”

"You and Nile are being so good to me, and I’ve been secretly very selfish. Because I’ve been thinking, ‘this is just life,’ you know? It’s just how people die all the time: strokes, heart attacks, cancers, old age…”

“I choose old age. And with you.”

“Too late for that, my love,” Joe said, wistful. “But as mundane as all this is, as painful, as… frightening, even, I’ve been so goddamn _grateful_ Nicky. So grateful that I'll never have to live in a world without you." He turned his head then to look at him. "I’m so sorry. All you’ve ever asked of me is that we go together, and I can’t give you that.”

Nicky swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “You would, if you could.”

“I would. But none of this odd blessing has ever been of our choosing.” His voice broke. “And I’m relieved, Nicky. I’m so sorry and I’m selfish and I suffer for you now but I won’t have to live on and suffer without you and I’m so fucking grateful.”

Nicky could barely make out the words through the crying—Joe’s, his.

He didn’t let go of Joe’s hand for the rest of the drive.

\---

It was late afternoon and the sun was hanging low above the treetops. Joe was sitting outside on the porch in the sturdy Adirondack chair Nile had made during a brief foray into woodworking years ago. A thick quilt lay across his lap and his eyes were closed, a slight smile on his face. 

He opened them as Nicky approached. "Nicolò," he murmured, and reached out a hand.

Nicky grasped it and lifted it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles. The skin was spotted and papery, but still smelled like Joe. 

"How are you, hayati?" he asked.

Joe smiled. "I dreamt of you."

Nicky perched on the armrest and ran a hand through Joe's thinning curls. "Good dreams, I hope."

"Mmm." Joe leaned into the touch. “There was a garden, and we were eating oranges. You licked the juice from my fingers.” 

"Cádiz," Nicky said. "We had been at sea for six months. I think we both almost died of scurvy. We spent our entire week in port eating oranges and making love."

Joe chuckled. "I remember that."

Nicky ran a soothing hand down his arm. "You seem well today.” It was unnerving, to see the shaved side of his head and the thick scar.

“I’m still on the good stuff,” he confided. “Nile’s a pretty good nurse.”

Nicky raised his eyebrows, a mock frown. “So it’s a party now, is it?”

Joe sighed and shook his head. “It’s not bad yet, but I couldn’t eat. She gave me two doses of cannabinol and part of a joint.”

“Ahh. Do you want dinner soon? Nile is making couscous tfaya."

Joe was drifting a little on the marijuana. "I remember the boat,” he started, his voice easy and slow. “I loved being at sea with you.”

“And I, you. Come. Let’s eat.”

Joe hummed contentedly as he closed his eyes again.

Nicky squeezed his shoulder and turned back towards the house.

\---

The chemo treatments were hellish, but Joe was strong. Even as they exhausted him, he remained himself: a weaker self, an exhausted self, but a man who knew himself and had lost any shame about a failing mortal body. He lost weight he couldn’t spare, and spent long days in bed, most of them with Nicky pressed against him reading, sometimes silently and sometimes aloud, until Joe couldn’t take even the comfort, and sent him away.

All of their long life together, he and Joe had always protected each other. It was what they did, the constant thread running through the ages, as natural for them as breathing. Except now, Joe was hurting and there was nothing Nicky could do—no one to fight, no battle to wage—because in the end the only thing he couldn’t protect Joe from was the treachery of his own body.

When he returned for bed Joe said, “Try not to touch tonight, and love me from that side of the bed. I can recall feeling this bad many times, but the pain passed in seconds or minutes and was gone like it had never been. This pain started before the first radiation treatment and it hasn’t stopped for months. I don’t want this, Nicky.”

“No one does.” He reached out but Joe slapped his hand down.

“What did I just say? Even my skin hurts.”

“I’ll get you more medication.”

He did, and Joe settled into a deep doze, and Nicky leaned on his elbow and watched the other half of his heart struggle against fitful dreams. He watched to be sure Joe kept breathing through the night, to be there if there was anything other than providing pills he could do.

They’d been a mistake.

Joe woke, or seemed to, and stared at Nicky for a moment before his expression turned dark. "Why won't you stay dead?" he yelled in his old dialect of Arabic, reaching behind him for a sword that wasn't there. "How many times must I kill you?"

He swung wildly at Nicky, beating at his chest and face with his fists, grasping for anything he could use as a weapon. Nicky staggered backwards off the bed, trying to shield himself from the blows without hurting Joe. When Joe fell off the side of the bed and hit the floor he grunted, crumpling into a ball. “Ow, fuck. What…?”

“Bad dream,” Nicky said. “Perhaps the sleeping pill and the opiates weren’t such a good idea after all.” Nile had warned him, but Joe was suffering. He was supposed to just watch?

The door flung open and Nile burst in.

"Nicky? Is everything okay? What's—” she stopped and took in the scene.

“Sorry, Nile,” Joe said from the floor. Too much pain and a thousand years from which to draw my nightmares.” He looked up at Nicky. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” He grinned weakly. “It’s not like you can kill me.”

But Joe’s eyes glistened and tears spilled over before he ducked his head and turned back toward the bed. “Maybe I could try sleeping alone just tonight.”

“All right.” Nicky was already backing out of the room, his heart breaking in his chest.

He went down the hall to the bathroom and slumped down on the edge of the tub. It had been nearly a millennium since he'd seen that look of hatred in Joe's eyes. He had thought he would never have to see it again, not for any reason. On the counter beside him was his razor. He stared at it, considering; it had been half a year or more since he last tested his immortality. He picked up the razor and pried out the blade, taking a breath before drawing it across the top of his thigh. Blood welled to the surface for a moment, but the skin was already starting to close. He wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, he began to frenziedly slash at his bare arms and legs.

He must have accidentally hit an artery, because he came to in a pool of his own blood with Nile standing over him looking terrified—and then furious—when he blinked back to life.

“You need to get your shit together,” she said, grabbing some towels off the rack and dumping them in his lap. “I mean, what were you thinking? What if that had worked, huh, what then?”

He covered his face with his hands, still tacky with his drying blood. He didn’t have an answer.

Nile sighed. “What did you give him?”

“The Ambien and some Xanax and pain medication.”

“Shit. He’d almost have to be immortal to handle all that. Nicky… read the prescription labels. Or ask me next time. It’s almost five—you should clean up and take a shower. I’ll start breakfast.”

Blindly, he reached out his hand. She took it without hesitation. “Thank you. I’m sorry for—I’m sorry.” 

She squeezed his hand. “Come downstairs when you’re ready.” 

\---

The doctor prescribed Joe a new medication to help with sleep. It was made by Merrick's drug company. Nicky grabbed the bottle and flung it hard across the room when he saw. Nile allowed him his outburst and then calmly went to pick it up, placing it back with the others on the table where she was separating out doses into a pill organizer. 

"I think it's time we called Booker," she said, not looking up from her work.

"No," Nicky replied flatly.

She stared at him for a long, hard moment. He held her gaze until she sighed and went back to counting pills.

"You're not the only one who loves him,” she said, voice harsh and low, when he was halfway across the room.

He stopped and turned back. She looked up at him, her lip quivering and her eyes brimming with tears. "You know how I know that you're drowning, Nicky? It’s because I am, too.”

“Please," she continued softly, voice cracking, "let us do this as a family."

Booker arrived two days later. Nile hugged him tightly, the relief clear on her face. Nicky watched from the porch and kept his expression carefully schooled. 

He met Booker’s eye, and his resolve almost broke at the tentative look he saw there. Almost. "I'm still mad at you, you know."

"I know," Booker said.

Nicky nodded. "Good,” he said, before turning and walking back into the house.

\---

Booker had changed in the intervening years. He was sober a lot more often now, for one. But he also seemed—steadier maybe, less haunted. He and Nile slotted back together so easily that Nicky was left feeling off-kilter, for the first time ever the odd one out.

\---

Joe was having a bad day. One of the ones where the chemo drained every ounce of energy he had, stole his appetite, but made him vomit and kept him from sleep. Nicky sat with him on the bathroom tiles, stroking his forehead with a cool cloth between bouts of retching where nothing but bile came up.

“I can still piss by myself, too,” Joe said.

“I know. I just—we have so little time left. Let me share it. Please.”

Joe sighed and leaned into Nicky’s shoulder. “It’s hard, Nicky. I feel like I’ve got nothing left right now.”

“And I’m making it harder?” He wanted Joe to say no—he expected Joe to say no. But Joe said nothing at all.

Booker settled Joe in the living room. Nicky could hear the soft sounds of a football match playing on the TV.

He was just finishing up the dishes when Booker came back into the kitchen. He paused when he saw Nicky, eyes shifting quickly like he was looking for an escape route. They hadn’t been alone in a room together since his arrival. Nicky dried his hands on a dish towel and turned to face him. 

"You're good with him," he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Booker looked uncomfortable. "I had three sons, Nicky."

“I seem to just…” Nicky sighed as he leaned back against the counter. “Not long ago, we were driving back from a chemo treatment. He apologized.”

Booker shrugged.

“ _He_ apologized to _me_ , Booker.”

“Uh huh,” Booker said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Nicky threw up his hands.

“Come on, Nicky. He’s the lucky one. He’s gonna be glad about that, and he’s gonna feel like shit about it, too.”

Nicky bristled. “Wow, thank you so much for that. Do you have any other pearls of wisdom you would like to share?" He felt his anger growing, spooling into something dark and mean in his gut. He wanted to lash out, to break something, to _hurt_ something. "You have no right to tell me what he is or isn’t, how he feels or doesn’t. You have no idea what it's been like. You haven’t been here, having to watch him aging. To watch something so paltry as an illness ravage him.”

"Yes, what could I _possibly_ know. It's not like I have years of experience actually nursing my youngest son through this very disease. It’s not like I don’t have decades of seeing everyone I’ve ever loved suffer and die," Booker snapped. “Except Andy, of course. You all made sure of that," he added with a harsh laugh.

Nicky started to interject, but Booker was on a roll now and continued undeterred. 

"And don’t you dare throw it in my face that I wasn’t here. I mean, _Christ,_ Nicky—if it weren't for Nile were you even going to tell me he was sick, or was I just supposed to show up in London in fifty years going _where's Joe_?"

"Maybe that's what you deserved,” Nicky said, folding his arms across his chest.

Booker recoiled, looking hurt. "Do you blame me for this?"

"I watched him die over and over again in that lab. Twenty times in an hour at one point. It's not unreasonable to think that there's some sort of logic to all this—that there's a finite number of times we can come back."

"Oh, so there’s ‘s _ome sort of logic'_ now. Because I thought this was all _destiny_ ,” he spat out with a sardonic twist to his mouth.

Nicky rounded on him, full of righteous fury like he hadn't felt in years. "No, it’s not, because if it was destiny it would be you and not him!" 

Booker stared at him, nonplussed. "...Well, _yes_. That was kind of what I was going for."

Nicky started to open his mouth, but he had no rebuttal for that. He sagged against the wall, all the fight gone out of him. He rubbed at his face and felt the skin of his palms rasping over week-old stubble he couldn't be bothered to shave.

There was a tentative hand on his shoulder, and when he didn't shrug it off, Booker stepped closer and hugged him. Nicky stubbornly kept his arms at his sides, but he accepted the embrace. "Don't think for a second that this isn't killing me, too," Booker said softly. "Just, not in the way that matters, I guess."

Nicky sighed, deflated. "If I’m being fair, I think I've probably died as many times as him or more, so maybe there is no logic _or_ destiny."

He felt Booker nod. "Maybe it's just life."

They broke apart, both considering the other. Nicky was quiet for a long moment before saying, "Will you stay?"

"For as long as you’ll let me.”

Nicky nodded. "It's good to have you home," he said, and Booker smiled, eyes wet.

Joe cried out from the other room. Nicky moved to go to him, but Booker stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. “Nile and I can keep him company—or not, whatever he needs. You really should get some rest. You look like shit,” he added ruefully.

Nicky still hesitated, but Booker looked at him, imploring—“Please, let us help you”—and he relented.

\---

The last round of chemo came and went. The cancer stayed.

The oncologist and Nicky tried to get Joe to keep going: maintenance they called it, or another round with different drugs.

“No,” Joe said, and he still had the life in him to make that clear. “No more poison. No more added pain. I’ll just take what my body dishes out.”

“Joe, you can’t give up.”

“And Nicky, you can’t stop the inevitable.” It wasn’t a fight. Nicky had no fight left in him, just a yawning emptiness looming that Joe had always filled.

Joe spent more time sleeping now, either in bed or propped up in the recliner in the living room. Nicky had never cared about football before, but now he always had a game on in the background, dutifully narrating as Joe drifted beside him.

\--

It was late morning and Joe was sitting at the table, a stack of paper beside him and a set of pastels Nile had bought him scattered around. He was making a series of lines, over and over again in different colors, covering the whole page in streaks of purple and orange and red. It reminded Nicky of watching the sunset in the desert, when the entire sky would explode in a riot of color.

"What are you drawing?" he asked

Joe looked up, just now noticing Nicky, then back down at the paper. "I'm not, really. Just smoothing the edges off these new pastels." He frowned. “It looks a bit like the desert at dusk, no?”

Nicky swallowed hard. "It's very beautiful.” He gestured at the chair across from Joe. "May I join you?"

“Of course.” When Nicky sat down, Joe pushed the stack of blank papers towards him before resuming his broad strokes across the page.

Nicky had never been much of an artist, always content to leave that to Joe. He picked up a thick black pastel and sketched a crude house, the cartoonish kind a child might draw with just three lines and a slanted roof. He drew four stick figures standing beside it.

Joe had stopped his work, now watching Nicky curiously instead. Nicky turned the paper around so he could see, feeling awkward and unsure. "What do you think?"

Joe reached for it, studying it intently, his brow furrowed. He took the pastel from Nicky's hand and carefully added two more figures beside the others. He slid the paper back across the table. "That's better."

"Yes," Nicky agreed, warmth flooding his chest. "Yes, it is."

The next morning he found a new sketch, clearly of this house and its garden, with outlines he recognized as himself and Booker and Nile, Quynh not far behind him, and further back Andy and Joe barely discernable, aglow like the Prophet watching over them. Unwittingly, he ruined it with his tears.

\---

One morning, Nicky came down into the kitchen and saw Booker and Nile sitting close together at the table, talking in low voices. They stopped abruptly when they spotted him. 

"What's going on?"

A look passed between them, inscrutable, and then Nile stood up and came around to the other side of the table. She pulled out a chair for him and motioned at it. "Come sit down, Nicky. We need to talk to you about something."

He sat, unease growing steadily. Nile hovered at his shoulder. 

"So, um, here's the thing”—Booker shifted awkwardly, couldn't meet his eyes—“after Andy died, Joe came to see me and asked me to draw up some papers." Booker took a folder that was lying in front of him and slid it across the table to Nicky. 

He opened it and scanned it quickly, a lump forming in his throat, not quite believing what he was reading. _I, Yusuf al-Kaysani, being of sound mind, willfully and voluntarily declare_ —

He slammed the folder closed and started to stand, but Nile stopped him. "No. No way," Nicky said, his heart now threatening to jackrabbit out of his chest.

Booker took out the sheet of paper and turned it over, pointing to the bottom where Joe had signed his name in big, looping letters, followed by Copley's neat script on the witness line below.

"It's what he said he wanted," Booker said, soft and apologetic.

Nicky's eyes skimmed the page with its long list of ways a person could be kept alive, and Joe's initials filling every check box in the _NO_ column.

"We talked about it some," Booker continued, "He said that as senseless as Andy's death was, at least it was fast, clean. She didn’t have to linger."

"But why wouldn't he tell me? Why would he talk to _you_ about it?" Nicky asked, voice shaking.

Booker shrugged. "Maybe he was trying to spare you more pain."

"Maybe…" he said, but doubt was creeping in because even as he said it, he thought back through the years—to all the times that Joe _had_ tried to talk to him about it. To the times he had practically begged Nicky to promise him that he would be willing to—to _what_? To _kill_ him? It had always seemed so preposterous, so far away, and so Nicky had brushed him off, sure that his own time would come and they would meet their end together.

Of course Joe had gone to Booker, because no matter everything else between them, he knew that Booker would make him that promise.

Nicky dropped his head into his hands. He remembered all those years ago, after they lost Andy, when Joe had looked at him with pleading eyes and asked Nicky to accept when it was time to let him go. He had never denied Joe anything before—he wasn’t going to start now. 

"How does this work, exactly?”

"It doesn't have to be soon," Nile offered quietly. "But, he’s Stage 4. If we’re doing it legally he’ll need to apply for and get the drugs he needs and get signoff from at least a couple of doctors. Then, when it gets bad, we can take him to a special facility and be with him and..." Nicky looked up at her and saw that she had been crying, twin tear tracts running down her cheeks. 

"No," Nicky said, sure of this one thing at least. "No, it should be here. At home."

Booker reached out and covered Nicky's hand with his own. "Doctors don’t matter. I’ll make sure with Joe, but I don’t think he cares. I can get us everything we'll need."

They didn't discuss it again, but a week later Booker came home with a brown paper package tucked under his arm. Nicky followed him to the kitchen and watched as he unwrapped a small amber vial and put it in the fridge. “Nothing has to happen yet,” Booker said. “It’s just so we have it when it’s time.”

Nicky nodded, but he kept staring at the closed refrigerator door long after Booker had left.

\---

Joe was asleep again. Nicky was sitting on the porch steps, smoking a cigarette and watching the sun set low behind the trees. 

“Those things‘ll kill you, you know.”

He looked up and saw Booker leaning against the railing. “God willing,” Nicky said, as he passed him the cigarette. Booker took a long drag before stubbing it out.

"That's my line." He shot Nicky a pointed look.

Nicky ignored him.

Booker sighed and came to sit beside him, hands clasped between his knees, looking up at the sky. They sat in silence for a long time.

“How did you bear it?" he asked suddenly. "Watching them die while you stayed behind, all those years spent without them. How did you survive?”

“You were there Nicky, you know that I didn't—I fell the fuck apart.” Booker ran a hand across his face, continued, "Time doesn't heal all wounds, but it does help. So does therapy, apparently."

Nicky laughed at that, a single surprised _hah_ , like it was punched out of him. Booker smiled, a moment of reprieve. 

"I think I understand better now why you did it. It doesn't make it right, but—these past years—I—" Nicky took a deep breath, exhaled. "There have been times when I felt desperate for a way out, too."

Booker looked stricken. “As much as I envied what you and Joe had, I never would have wished this for you, for either of you.”

“I know,” Nicky said, hearing it for the apology that it was.

They were quiet for a while after that, listening to the cicadas drone and watching the stars appear one-by-one in the sky.

“I can't remember his last good day," Nicky said, "the last time he was really okay, really able to think about something besides the pain. I ignored the import of his aging and I resisted the meaning of his illness. I just… that's what I wish we could have—one last good day.”

"Do you still love him?" Booker asked. "Not who he was, but Joe exactly as he is right now: old, sick, frail, exhausted? Do you still love him even now?"

"Of course," Nicky said without thinking, relieved when he realized that it was the truth.

"Then every day you still have together is a good day."

\---

The cancer crossed the meningeal boundary and began to eat at the nerves in his spine. There were no drugs to combat that, but Booker found a woman who came and pushed something right into his spinal cord, far up his back where it could have paralyzed Joe. Nicky stood in the doorway and trembled, then went outside and sobbed when it was over and Joe sighed with relief and was still able to move. 

There was no more denial to be had; all Nicky could feel was their time running short, and he wanted nothing more than to spend every second of every day they had left together. 

He bathed Joe at night, lathering his back and shoulders, shampooing his hair, and Joe would relax and lean into his touch, a moment of peace between them that Joe gave freely, that Nicky greedily accepted. Nicky tried to focus on these small, sensory pleasures. He would lotion Joe’s dry hands and feet, play him records he had loved from before, and cook for him all his favorite dishes from back home, letting the fragrant aromas permeate the house even though Joe wasn’t eating.

“I like the smells,” he would say, and take one bite of something and hold it in his mouth like he was savoring the finest meal.

One warm, bright day, the four of them piled into Nile’s car and drove to the beach. They rented a big umbrella, and slathered themselves in sunscreen before Nicky helped Joe down to the water. They stood there for a long time, waves lapping at their ankles, staring out at the sparkling blue-green of the Mediterranean. 

Later, they settled on a towel back in the shade and Joe stuck his legs out and burrowed his feet into the sand. Nicky shifted behind him, bracketing him with his knees and guiding him to lean back until he was resting against Nicky’s chest. Nicky tried very, very hard to not so much as breathe for fear that he would break the moment, but Joe just let out a contented sigh and rested his head against Nicky’s shoulder. 

“This is nice,” Joe said.

“It really is,” Nicky agreed, and he pressed a kiss to Joe’s temple as they sat and watched the tide slowly roll out.

\---

After they finally stopped killing each other, it had taken nearly twenty years before Joe died again from something other than Nicky’s sword.

“Yusuf!” Nicolò shouted, noticing a half-second too late and trying to alert him to the danger. Yusuf looked up at the sound of his name and met Nicolò’s eyes, smiling brilliantly for one perfect moment before the bandit behind him slit his throat. Nicolò was already up and moving, grabbing his sword and making quick work of the attacker.

He knelt beside Yusuf's body, sighing with relief when he saw the tell-tale twitches of life returning. “I was not sure if you resisted all death or only my best efforts to kill you,” he said. 

Yusuf groaned as he sat up and rubbed at where the wound had been. “If those were your best efforts, I am very disappointed.” He spat some blackish blood into the dirt.

Nicolò laughed brightly, before turning serious again. “I do not know what I would have done if you had not come back to me,” he confessed, voice soft.

Yusuf took Nicolò’s hand and brought it to his lips. “I will always come back to you, as long as I’m able.”

“And what if there's a day when you are no longer able? What if I cannot follow? Cannot even say goodbye?”

Yusuf paused, considering, before reaching out and cupping Nicolò’s face in his palms. “Then let us make our goodbyes now, and we can know that they are said if that day ever comes.”

He pulled him close and kissed him gently on each corner of his mouth. “Goodbye, my Nicolò. Thank you now for what I am sure will be many lifetimes of happiness.”

\---

Joe was sleeping when Nicky came into their room. He quietly changed clothes and slipped into bed beside him. Joe murmured something unintelligible as his arms reached out to encircle Nicky—in sleep, tranquilized to the gills on hypnotics and narcotics, on that shit from Merrick Pharmaceuticals, he breathed almost easily, and moved almost like he felt no pain.

Nicky watched him. His face was softer, the lines less pronounced. He looked more like the Yusuf that Nicky fell in love with so very many years ago. He soaked him in, trying to memorize every crease, every lash, every freckle.

The crease between his brows deepened, and he began to grimace. The medications were wearing off. Nicky glanced up, saw the pale light of dawn. No wonder.

Very soon, Nicky knew, there would come a day when Joe would be gone and moments like these would live on only in his heart. But for now, in this moment, Joe was here, warm and snug against him, and Nicky would savor every second, praying that it would be enough to sustain him for however much longer he was to endure. 


	2. There's only one place to go....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end that follows the almost-end
> 
> Please check the end notes for spoilers, detail, trigger warnings....

“Nicky?” Joe whispered.

“I’m here, my love.”

“I don’t think I can see. I’m not—where are we?”

“In bed, where I’m happy to keep you forever.”

“Mmm.” The pain lines didn’t lessen, though Joe was putting up a strong front. “Is Booker around? I’d like to talk with him, for a moment. Make sure we’re all straightened out.”

“I’ll wake him,” Nicky said, and rose quickly to turn before the tears started streaming down his face. He had learned to sob in silence, through measured breaths and smooth motions, so he went to Booker’s room and knocked. Stepped inside without asking and broke down, falling to his knees beside the bed. “I think he’s ready. I’m not, Sebastien. I will never be.”

Hands rested on his shaking shoulders and he let loose, sobbing into the duvet to muffle the sounds, twisting his hands in the thick fabric while Booker—Booker of all people held him and made annoying soothing noises that meant nothing. Nicky’s world, once so rich with vibrant colors, was turning flat and gray.

He cried until he had no energy left for tears, until Nile who he hoped had been up and in the kitchen, slipped into the room as well. Only then did Booker say, “It’s not okay. It sucks. It made me curse God. But Nicky, if you were the one in that bed, Joe would have the courage to let you go.”

His stomach convulsed, a last wave of grief. “I am not Joe. He has always been stronger. He has always been gentler, and more generous.”

“Stop that shit right now,” Nile said, shocking him. “I mean it. Don’t you dare ruin him by trying to sanctify him. You love a man, Nicky. A wonderful, amazing man. Don’t mess that up in your memories. Keep the man you love.”

Booker huffed out some sound between laughter and tears. “When did she get so smart?”

Booker fetched the bottle from the refrigerator. Nile made tea. Nicky slipped back into their bedroom, where Joe had curled up around some pain or cramp in his spine, sweating.

“My heart. Let me get the morphine.”

“No. I want to be clear-headed.” He tried to smile up at Nicky and forced a cleansing breath. “I’ll just pretend someone got me with a grenade. Those were always a bitch to come back from.”

Nicky sniffed. “I never wanted to say goodbye to you.”

“And there’s no need to now. We said our goodbyes a thousand years ago. Today I give you everything I have left, as little as it is.”

“And today I bid you keep what you have always had: my heart. Hold it safe until we find each other again.”

Joe sighed, and smiled, and his warm eyes brightened. “Always the romantic.”

Booker came in, and Nile, and they drank tea and talked about old battles, children they’d saved. A puppy Joe had brought home for Nicky in spite of his faith’s rules and strictures about dogs.

“So,” Joe said. “Will you forgive me, Nicolo di Genoa?”

Nicky blinked. “For making almost a thousand years whole and perfect, for giving me more love than all of the great romances dream of?”

“For leaving you now?”

Nicky swallowed. “I would forgive you anything, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysahi. But there is nothing to forgive.”

Joe reached out, his arm weak and trembling, the skin of his hand papery and thin, and cupped his cheek. “I know it’s back in my brain, feasting away. I don’t want to lose my memories of you. I don’t want you to see them go.”

Nile sniffed.

Booker cleared his throat wetly. “You two…” he whispered. “You’ve been blessed with so much. Joe knows it. Nicky, you know it too.”

Nicky blinked away tears and bent to press his mouth to Joe’s for perhaps the last time. “Oh, I know.”

Nile fed Joe the liquid, because Nicky couldn’t. “Joe swallowed, eyes on Nicky’s, said “I love you” and “Thank you for my life” and “I still believe in destiny, Nicolo. Don’t give up on that.”

Booker and Nile sat on the corners of the bed, while Nicky crawled back under the covers and turned away, felt Joe’s frail body press against him, held the arm that wrapped around his chest and relished the grip it kept on him. Then it slackened, and loosened altogether, and the warm breaths on his neck faded and stopped and Nicky’s world went cold.

“Come on, Nicky. Let’s get some air.”

“He stays here, at least until tomorrow. Just…” Nicky sniffed. He knew it was insane. “Just in case.”

“Absolutely.”

Nicky spent that day and night in their room, sitting on the floor by the bed. He’d seen Joe dead a thousand times or more. He prayed, _wake up_. He prayed, _be all right_. And as day turned to night and Joe stayed dead, his body gone cold and stiff with rigor and then soft again, Nicky prayed for mercy. Finally, he prayed for a sign of how he was supposed to go on when he had no choice in the matter.

“Nicky?” Sunlight streamed through the window. None of them had ever returned from mortality. None of them had returned from real death.

“Booker, I hope you will have patience, as I don’t see the next few centuries being easy on you.”

He heard the chuckle, didn’t look. “I owe you a few centuries. But I have something for you first.”

Dutifully, Nicky rose and left Joe’s corpse in the bed, following Booker into the living room. Like bouquets of flowers, which neither he nor Joe had been fond of, Joe’s sketches were scattered around the room: himself and Joe from sixty years ago, before Merrick; Andy; oils Joe rarely used and pastels he’d developed a fondness for toward the end, depicting places they had been and cherished. Depicting _them._ And there were photographs. Surveillance footage? Not all of it. Some looked like Nile had taken them, and he gravitated toward the picture of him and Joe stretched out on a bench in Central Park, himself tucked into Joe’s chest and both of them laughing. 

His throat felt like it was being abraded. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“Brother, I have no idea. Joe just told me to do it, and to shower you with presents on an impressively rigorous schedule until you told me it was time for them to stop. He said something about, uh,” and here Booker stopped to clear his throat, “cherishing you.”

Nicky ran his fingertips over the glass that protected the image of them on the bench: an image that captured Joe within a year or two of his mortality setting in. “Then it was meant to make me feel better.”

It did not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter absolutely involves character death from which they don't come back. And grief. And family.

**Author's Note:**

> In this story, Joe ages and eventually develops incurable cancer while Nicky stays immortal. There is discussion of euthanasia for Joe. The (remixed Chapter 1 of the) story stops before Joe's actual death, but it is definitely imminent.
> 
> There is one brief description of self-harm that results in an accidental death (temporary).
> 
> There is also a brief recounting of Andy's death. It involves grievous injuries after a vehicle accident and Quynh mercy-killing her as an act of love.
> 
> Chapter 2 does not stop before Joe's actual death, but after. Because my friend reads deathfic. 
> 
> \--  
> AnnabelleVeal wrote this tragedy in an amazing and heartfelt way that required many tissues. I remixed it for a friend whose parent died this year of... dementia. So she couldn't have read it with that so close in her life. My thanks to the author for their generosity. 
> 
> Unlike the author of the original story, this is probably as close to (permanent) deathfic or unhappy endings as I'll ever get in this fandom, unless my friend wants a birthday present or something.


End file.
